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Dessert

A Delicious Cake

A layered cake made with flour, sugar, egg whites, butter, whiskey, and fruit, topped with a sugar‑egg white icing.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and raisin match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,075 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

A Delicious Cake

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the cakes

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. In a bowl, mix flour, sugar, egg whites, butter, and whiskey until smooth.

  3. Divide the batter into three layers and bake in cake tins until golden.

Make the icing

  1. For the icing, boil 1 pound of sugar with 1 teacup of water for 8-10 minutes until it forms strings.

  2. Do not stir the mixture; if it begins to crystallize, add 1 beaten egg white.

  3. Once boiled, pour the syrup over 4 beaten egg whites and mix until it whitens.

  4. Gradually add the prepared citron, figs, raisins, and almonds to the icing.

  5. Beat the icing until it begins to stiffen, then spread it between and on the sides of the cakes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Flour + raisintop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,075 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Raisin + almondtop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,781 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonanone (fruity, floral).

  3. Fig + almondtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together519 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

  4. Flour + almondtop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,673 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Fig + raisintop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together737 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

All-purpose flour
Provides the structure that holds the cake layers together as they bake.
Egg whites
Set during baking to give the cake lift and structure, and whip into the icing for body.
Butter
Adds fat for a tender crumb and rich flavor.
Granulated sugar
Sweetens the cake and helps it brown, and forms the syrup that becomes the icing.
Raisins
Add chewy sweetness and moisture to the icing.

The step that matters

Do not stir the sugar syrup while it boils. Stirring can trigger crystallization, making the syrup grainy. Adding a beaten egg white helps keep it smooth, and the syrup must reach the string stage so the icing sets properly.

Swap the fig

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, sugar, egg, butter, raisin, almond):

  1. Vanillafits about as well
  2. Figthe original
  3. Coconutfits less well
  4. Peachfits less well

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, sugar, egg, butter, raisin, almond. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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